


No Strings On Me

by hitlikehammers



Series: Marionettes [1]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Avengers: Age of Ultron (Movie) Spoilers, Avengers: Age of Ultron (Trailer) Spoilers, BAMF Bucky Barnes, Bucky Barnes Returns, Character Study, Extended Scene, Gen, Hurt Steve Rogers, Love, M/M, Missing Scene, Pure Unfounded Speculation, Reunions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-23
Updated: 2014-10-23
Packaged: 2018-02-22 06:29:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 921
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2497943
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hitlikehammers/pseuds/hitlikehammers
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He’s known his share of nightmares, these past few months; he’s lived his share of horrors these past seventy years.</p><p>Nothing quite matches this, though: this scene, this sight, this terrible, impossible truth that he won’t accept, that he can’t abide.</p><p>That shield isn’t supposed to snap. That body isn’t allowed to be broken. </p><p>The heart and soul of Steven Grant Rogers isn’t a thing that’s permitted to be snuffed from this earth.</p><p>Not while Bucky’s still breathing.</p><p> </p><p>  <span class="small">Extended scene/pure unfounded speculation born from the <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tmeOjFno6Do">Avengers: Age of Ultron</a> teaser trailer.</span></p>
            </blockquote>





	No Strings On Me

**Author's Note:**

> Because that trailer, you guys. THAT TRAILER.
> 
> Thanks to [weepingnaiad](http://archiveofourown.org/users/weepingnaiad) for the quick look-over and the encouragement to share.

He’s known his share of nightmares, these past few months; he’s lived his share of horrors these past seventy years.

Nothing quite matches this, though: this scene, this sight, this terrible, impossible truth that he won’t accept, that he can’t abide.

That shield isn’t supposed to snap. That body isn’t allowed to be broken. 

The heart and soul of Steven Grant Rogers isn’t a thing that’s permitted to be snuffed from this earth.

Not while Bucky’s still breathing.

So he sends up a prayer to that saint from way back when—the one Sarah Rogers taught him to call on when Bucky’s whole self was wrapped up in those heaving lungs and a fluttery pulse and too much goodness and not enough life on a bed in the cold, and by god, it’d never failed then, so it’d better not start now: he closes his eyes and hears the words and thinks at least there is this to have drawn from what he was, what they made him into.

At least they taught him how to stop metal that wants to be flesh.

“There are,” the monstrosity rumbles, walks slow toward Steve’s still body where it’s draped over the rubble, and Bucky knows he’d be able to see just fine, be able to tell whether that chest’s rising and falling or standing too damned still, but he can’t look.

He can’t look. 

He breathes in, and activates the weaponry: a parting gift from the last safe-house he’d trashed and burned.

“No strings on me.”

“Funny story,” Bucky hisses, and the thing—all metal and red but _not like him_ —the _thing_ can’t so much as flinch, can’t so much as zero in on him in time to stop what comes, because that’s what he is, that’s what he does—that is the gift he will glean from this curse if it kills him.

“Me neither, motherfucker.”

The discs fly, latch, hold: the pulses shiver along the metal and into the wiring, into the circuitry, and the thing falls; and if it can feel, Bucky remembers the pain, remembers the black that comes when the system fails.

Bucky hopes like hell this thing can feel pain.

But he knows, just the same, that the pain doesn’t last, and the effects aren’t long-term—immobilization. Operant conditioning. Valuable machinery can’t be compromised indefinitely.

He bites his lip until there’s blood, and then he turns. He runs.

He falls to his knees at the center of his universe, splayed out in too much red, not enough blue.

“Jesus,” Bucky exhales, taking in the damage. “Oh, fuck, Stevie.”

He reaches out to touch Steve’s chest with his left hand, to catch the pulse in his neck with his right and god, oh god, let it be there, let him find it.

“Come on,” he whispers, to the universe, to the man before him: to the hand that won’t stop shaking long enough for him to feel a goddamned thing.

“Come _on_ —”

Bucky’s own heart stutters when Steve’s eyelids shift, and he thanks the cosmos and the good saint and Sarah Rogers herself, somewhere in the ether, for not letting him down.

“Steve,” Bucky exhales, and he slides his hand from Steve’s neck to cup his face as those eyes open, as that gaze shivers, sharpens: finds him.

The chest beneath his metal fingers heaves; freezes, but Bucky can feel the heart below like a Richter reading, seismic and pounding and pulling the rift in Bucky’s own chest wide.

“Buck,” Steve breathes out, eyes shining, and Bucky knows that look before Steve says anything more, before he asks, because he’s watched Steve wake from the jaws of death before; he’s knows that askance in his face: is it over? Did they lose?

Bucky _remembers_ that look on that stupid, stubborn, precious-perfect face.

“Bucky, you’re,” Steve swallows, looks around them, takes in hell. “Are we—”

“Shh,” Bucky hushes him, and refuses to dwell on what kept him away this long, what convictions held him back to reach out now, to show himself and hear that voice, to touch that skin only when it stood to be lost, when it could have been too late. 

He refuses to dwell on the fact that it almost _was_ too late. 

“Come on,” Bucky urges, and bears more of Steve’s weight than he lets on as he eases him up, holds him steady. “It won’t be down long.”

Bucky can hear it already, in fact: the whirring not his own.

“The others,” Steve croaks, terror in his eyes: devastation, and it clenches in Bucky’s chest like it’s his own.

It’s Steve’s. Of course it’s his own.

“They’re not here,” Bucky tells him, and it’s true: Bucky’d been focused on a singular point, true, but the rest of the so-called Avengers hadn’t been anywhere to be found since he’d dropped within a thousand-foot radius. “I don’t know where they are, but they’re not here.” 

Steve’s breath catches, and Bucky feels that, too.

“We’ll find ‘em,” he says without hesitation, without a second thought in mind. “I promise.”

Because he’d lied, is the thing. He’d lied, about the strings. He’s as tied up as anyone, as he’s ever been.

It’s just that then, the devil’d been pulling the cords.

Now, though, the only strings he’s got are tied to this punk, right here, and Bucky can live with that.

Steve looks at him like he can’t believe he’s real, like he’s precious and perfect too, somehow, and yeah.

He can _absolutely_ live with that.

**Author's Note:**

> Come flail with me over on [tumblr](http://hitlikehammers.tumblr.com).


End file.
